Tomorrow there will appear under this title, much anticipated in young literary circles, the first volume of a work by M. Marcel Proust. This work, which is notable from all points of view, is a long novel with the overall title of "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu", but might not be easily at hand to everyone. We are only too pleased to extract here, for those of our readers who are unable to embark upon the book itself, a passage which will allow them to judge the very remarkable quality of its ideas and its style. M. Proust is certainly no newcomer to the world of letters. Everybody is familiar with the wonderful page that one of his books, Les Plaisirs et les Jours, inspired Anatole France to write; the long admiring and profound chapter that Albert Sorel devoted to M. Proust's studies of Ruskin. But "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" marks a new and singularly expanded evolution of his talent. We have extracted from it this episode in which M. Proust demonstrates his exquisite delicacy and the rich ingenuity of his style:
Les Annales poliitiques et littéraires, 23
November 1913. Could this have been written by Proust? A letter to L'Excelsior
gives proof that he would write his own introductions to pieces in the
newspapers in order to publicize his book. He goes on to say "the
introduction, which in any case was extremely brief and simple (much
more so than the one that appeared today in Les Annales)". His
introduction was not printed in L'Excelsior but is he
suggesting in his letter that he wrote this one himself?
Created 12.12.24